Liquid Legal : Humanization and the Law

"Humanization and the Law" combines two current and complementary trends in the business-to-business (B2B) market of the legal industry: digitalization and humanization.

On the one hand, digital transformation in corporate legal departments and law firms continues to advance. Contract management, e-discovery, due diligence, legal operations, and forensic data analysis are just a few examples of task areas where the use of intelligent software solutions minimizes legal risks and increases compliance, enables efficiency gains and cost reductions through automation, and allows faster and more agile responses to changing market demands and client expectations.

On the other hand, the increasing number of failed digitalization projects shows that technology alone is not enough to successfully transform legal departments and law firms. Software solutions must be integrated into existing work processes, be easy to use, and provide real benefits in order to be accepted by employees. People and their ability to make decisions and lead others remain the focus in an increasingly digitalized legal industry.

More than 20 authors provide insights into why human aspects matter for business, what organizations can do to increase the mental well-being and motivation of their employees, and how to prevail in the upcoming war for talent in the legal industry.

"The legal industry has been largely dismissive of "soft skills" and "humanizing law." One of the paradoxes of our time is that the ascendency of automation, artificial intelligence, blockchain, Big Data, and other technological platforms has elevated, not diminished, the importance of humanity. It is not only what distinguishes us from machines but it also enables us to apply our humanity to machines. The legal function will play an important role in this process but must first take a hard look at itself."

(Mark A. Cohen, in "Foreword")

Kai Jacob is the co-founder and co-chair of the Liquid Legal Institute, a think tank for the transformation of the legal market based in Munich. He is also a partner in Legal Operations & Transformation Services (LOTS) at KPMG Law since 2021. Kai is involved in various projects and initiatives concerning agile working in the legal department, the health of the legal profession and the future of legal managed services. He publishes regularly on these and other topics in professional journals and other publications. Prior to joining KPMG Law, Kai was a partner at Deloitte Legal and previously spent many years at SAP SE. Kai Jacob was admitted to the bar in 2004 and studied law in Marburg, Göttingen and Osnabrück.

Dierk Schindler is the co-founder of the Liquid Legal Institute e.V. and serves as Co-CEO, together with Kai Jacob and Bernhard Waltl. He is co-author and co-editor of numerous publications on innovation and transformation in the legal profession, most notably the two previous volumes of the book-series "Liquid Legal" in 2017 and 2020. In 2019, Dierk joined Robert BOSCH GmbH as their Vice President Corporate Legal Services, Mobility Solutions, Supply Chain and Logistics. He drives the adoption of digitally supported Agile practices and the digital transformation of the legal team. Prior to BOSCH, Dierk has spent 14 years with NetApp Inc., where he built the EMEA Legal Team, established the Deal Management function, and implemented the Global Legal Shared Services Team. He teaches at the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) on Innovation Management, Digital Business Law, and Compliance. Dierk is a certified lawyer, took his doctorate degree from Augsburg University, Germany, and his Master of International Law from Lund University, Sweden.

Roger Strathausen is a business consultant, author, and lecturer with expertise in legal operations, learning, and leadership whose clients are chiefly multinational companies. He took his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1996 and was an employee at SAP and an executive at Accenture. He published several books and is a co-founder of the Liquid Legal Institute and serves as vice chair of the supervisory board.

Bernhard Waltl is also co-founder and co-CEO of the LLI and has been an academic researcher and designs, develops, and evaluates technology and methods transforming the future of law. In 2017 he was invited from the Stanford University CodeX: Center for Legal Informatics where he conducted research on text mining and artificial intelligence in the legal domain. He is part of an international network of leading researchers from computer science, informatics, and legal science, and organizes scientific workshops at relevant conferences. He successfully had many projects with industry partners on text mining for the legal domain and also consulting projects for governments on algorithmic-decision-making.